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From the dW Editor in Chief

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Insights, tips, and resources for tomorrow's software developers and IT professionals -- and those who teach and coach them -- from kids coding coach and advocate Michael O'Connell. Michael currently leads coding clubs, camps and activities for grade school students. Prior to turning his focus to helping kids learn coding and computer science concepts, Michael served as developerWorks Founding Editor in Chief (and at that time this blog covered the evolution of developerWorks and related topics of interest to the dW community).

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Last week at the 17th Annual Jolt Product Excellence Awards (dubbed "the Oscars of our industry") ceremony at the SD West conference in Silicon Valley, IBM developerWorks received what many agree is the software development industry’s highest honor for a product or resource: The Jolt Hall of Fame award. Here are a couple of trophy photos (courtesy dW open source editor Mark Cappel): The “Hall of Fame inductees are consistent winners, whose high quality has been proven and maintained over time,” the Jolt awards site notes. Only one inductee is recognized with this award each year. This year the judges unanimously selected developerWorks, specifically praising our rich collection of quality how-to articles and tutorials. Jolt awards ceremony host Craig Newmark (of Craigslist) introduced the award: The Hall of Fame always generates lively discussion amongst the judges ... but this year, there was a quiet consensus. It was pretty unanimous that it was time to induct this giant into the JOLT Hall of Fame. This year’s winner is a treasure trove of IT-related topics and technologies and often has better technical articles than commercial publications and in many instances, is one of the few places anything is available. This year’s inductee is: IBM developerWorks. I was thrilled to be at the awards ceremony in person to receive the award. (Don't let the serious expression fool you.) In my brief moment on stage, I thanked the judges and thanked CMP Technology (which runs SD West,... [More]

As reported in our recent dW newsletter, last week the developerWorks team received some tragic news: Our good friend and colleague, Heidi Carson, was lost while scuba diving last week in the Caribbean. Heidi has been an integral part of developerWorks since its earliest days, most recently overseeing the editorial content on our Wireless and Web development zones. Heidi was adventurous, engaging, and extremely talented -- and we will miss her enormously. Our thoughts are with her family and all those close to her. Heidi and I got to know each other before the birth of developerWorks, when we were both working at IDG in San Francisco in the 1990s. About five years ago, when she was living in Berlin, I visited her and explored Germany. This week I was compelled to dig up a couple of photos from that trip. One is in the garden of the Hotel Elephant (notice the elephant growing in the background) in Weimar; the other is in the city center of Berlin. Last fall Heidi shared with me some photos of her too-recent wedding. One of those photos really stood out to me as capturing her beauty and her joyful presence: Heidi always knew how to enjoy life, and I was honored to have known her and to share some time with her. I miss you, Heidi -- both professionally and personally. Professionally, you've been a longtime champion of dW's focus on open and cross-platform environments, and you've played a key role in our success. (As... [More]

As already mentioned by fellow dW bloggers Bob Zurek (" Come all ye Open Source faithful ") and Dave Klavon (" IBM delivers open source partner package "), IBM recently announced a new effort to make it even easier for partners to successfully use open source . As described in InfoWorld : IBM wants to encourage more of its business partners to use its open-source, low-end application server and free entry-level database by giving those companies access to IBM sales, marketing and technical expertise at no charge. Partners who use IBM's WebSphere Application Server Community Edition (WAS CE) or the vendor's DB2 Express-C database will be able to directly tap IBM staff for advice on integration, scalability, testing, and support issues and won't have to pay for the privilege, IBM said Wednesday. Such IBM feedback should help business partners bring their software based on WAS CE or DB2 Express-C more quickly to market, according to Rado Nikolov, director of strategy and emerging business, independent software vendor (ISV) and developer relations at IBM. The company will also help some partners create more buzz for their products in different geographies through free ongoing telemarketing campaigns and discounted advertising. Partners can also call on IBM sales staff for assistance in closing deals, he said. For more details: See the formal announcement Visit the Initiative for Business Partners using open source Download and learn more about IBM's free data server -- DB2... [More]

I've been keeping busy over the past month with holiday travel to Taiwan and getting ready for teaching a university course about online communities (more about that later), but wanted to also take a moment to reflect on the past year -- and particularly the top dW content from 2006. One good measure of which content resonated is that which garnered the most attention in terms of click-throughs from our email newsletter. dW newsletter editor John Swanson kindly -- and very quickly -- tallied the numbers for 2006. (Thanks, John!) In chronological order, here are dW's top 10 items of 2006, based on newsletter-driven traffic: " Generate PDF files from Java applications dynamically " (Open Source zone, Jan. 24)
" ">Explore the new features of Eclipse V3.1 " (Open Source zone, Feb. 21)
" DB2 and open source: Put yourself on the map with Google Maps API, DB2/Informix, and PHP on Linux " (Information Management zone, March 2)
" Two tools bring Ajax to Eclipse's Ajax Toolkit Framework " (Open Source zone, May 9)
" Considering Ajax, Part 1: Cutting through the hype " (Web Development zone, May 9)
" ">Developing PHP the Ajax way, Part 1: Getting started " (Open Source zone, May 30)
" Ajax for Java developers: Exploring the Google Web toolkit " (Java technology zone, June 27)
" UNIX tips and tricks for a new user, Part 2: The vi text editor " (AIX and UNIX zone, Nov. 7)
" Discover the Ajax Toolkit Framework for Eclipse " (Open Source zone, Nov. 29)
" Kick-start your Java... [More]

Today provides a great opportunity to learn more about Caspian -- its significance, the vision behind it, and more. To get the scoop on this week's major Caspian product launch from Rational -- the Rational V7 Software Delivery Platform desktop products, based on Eclipse 3.2 -- join Grady Booch for a live dW chat this afternoon -- Thursday, Dec. 7, at 4:30 Eastern. Grady will answer your questions about the V7 Rational tools release. If you're reading this after the live developerWorks chat ends, don't fret: You can read the transcript (which will be posted shortly after the live event).

Today IBM Rational launched the new, version 7 batch of its desktop products (aka the Caspian release products). These Rational Software Delivery Platform desktop products, based on Eclipse 3.2, are designed to help development teams better design, implement and manage the delivery of software architectures. See the IBM Rational Web site for the brand's official announcement and perspective. Of particular note: These products are based on Eclipse 3.2. The fact that IBM used Eclipse as the foundation for its key set of developer products speaks strongly to its commitment to the Eclipse platform. Also of interest are the comments from my colleague Simon Johnston, who's already mentioned the launch in his blog today , and noted also that thanks in part to Simon's own efforts, "IBM [now] has a single method for the development of SOA solutions, whether you buy that method for your own use or you contract with IBM services; you the customer get the value of the combined experience of IBM's product and services communities." Across developerWorks we've published a number of new resources related to the new V7 products: Listen to a developerWorks interview podcast in which Rational VPs Jamie Thomas, Lee Nackman, and Scott Hebner give an overview of V7 of the IBM Rational Software Delivery Platform Desktop products, talk about the evolutionary changes in IT and in business that have been the impetus for V7, and more. Join Grady Booch for a live chat. Grady will answer your... [More]

Today Danny Sabbah, GM of IBM Rational Software, sent a note to IBMers that nicely summarizes a major milestone: The 5-year anniversary of Eclipse as an open source project. Here's an excerpt: Over the last five years, we've seen Eclipse evolve from a platform for application development tools to a universal integration platform for building and deploying software worldwide, with IBM driving much of the progress. ... Since this day in 2001, when IBM made available the source code for the Eclipse platform under an open source license at eclipse.org, Eclipse has grown to include 66 open source projects and is the basis for more than 1,300 products. According to IDC, Eclipse is the market leading Java IDE with 2.27 million users worldwide, which demonstrates a remarkable level of support for open source innovation and collaboration. The initial eclipse.org consortium grew quickly from an 8-member group including IBM and Rational Software, to today's 152-member-strong Eclipse Foundation. Java Development Tools (Java IDE) with its incremental compiler, the Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) and the Eclipse platform as a more general Rich Client Platform (RCP) are among the many innovations made possible by Eclipse. Within SWG, Eclipse has been adopted as the open source development platform across all our brands, and today more than 100 IBM products [including Lotus Sametime 7.5, WebSphere Portal 6.0, the upcoming IBM Lotus Notes "Hannover" release, to name a few] are based on... [More]

Last week there was quite a bit of news about the work of one of our own, developerWorks community program manager Rawn Shah. Rawn has helped develop -- and is co-teaching -- a new course at the University of Arizona this semester entitled "MIS 300 - Web 2.0: Maintaining and Developing Online Communities." The course description reads: Online social networking and communities have become a big role in how organizations interact within themselves as well as with external partners. Developing a healthy community can lead to new business opportunities, improved customer relations, as well as improved communications to the world. Online social network sites already claim over 300 million members worldwide in public sites that are starting to turn into a new generation of b2b and b2c business collaboration and brokerage sites. This course investigates the technologies, methods and practices towards developing online communities, and how this knowledge and these skills are applied to businesses. Kudos to Rawn Shah and the others at IBM and at the U of A who worked to get this class in place and to promote it. For more details, see Rawn's related Wiki , which includes the course syllabus, FAQ, Resources, and more, as well as a collection of related news articles -- which includes for example this Dr. Dobbs article -- that were published last week, and a link to last week's related press release announcing the course . It was not long ago when yours truly took a graduate course at... [More]

Yesterday Sam Ruby posted this interesting blog entry with a bit of feedback about the new IBM blogroll. It garnered some good comments as well ... worth a look. Of particular note is Sam's " planet " (a concept developerWorks has covered on occasion; see for example the January 2004 Edd Dumbill article XML Watch: Planet Blog ). Sam's "planet" shows "Selected blogs postings by IBM employees." I like how this presents the latest content from all of these IBM bloggers (effectively creating an IBMer group blog), along with a blogroll that links to each individual's blog. And I'm especially impressed with how quickly Sam put this together. Kudos, Sam. OK, back to perusing all these IBM blog posts -- some 50 entries already for today alone. Would a feed (Atom, RSS) combining all of these be a bit (too) overwhelming?

Today on the IBM.com home page is a story about IBM bloggers (available in fancy format , plain format ... and even in PDF ). This discusses not just the developerWorks bloggers, but also others -- like Ed Brill (who was already blogging when we launched the developerWorks blogs back in April of 2004, and who has a much much bigger following than I do with my blog -- and thus I remain grateful to this day for the time he referenced my blog from his blog ). Included is perspective on IBM's blogging guidelines, plus a link to the guidelines document itself. It also has some IBM bloggers addressing topics such as the best (and worst) reasons to blog about your work/job/career, the unexpected benefits of blogging, and their favorite non-IBMer blogs. Of particular interest in this story (aside from its mention of developerWorks and of dW bloggers such as dW community chief Rawn Shah , of course): A new blog directory , or "blogroll," is also now available on ibm.com to help visitors find IBMers who are now using blogs in the normal course of their jobs. By voluntarily listing themselves here, these IBM employees have set their welcome mat out for anyone to stop by, ask a question, pose an idea, take issue with a position, and otherwise engage in a new level of collaboration and conversation for corporations -- and the very real people who make them work. I am glad to see this new IBM-wide blogroll , and continue to be impressed by IBM's adoption of blogs, as well as podcasts... [More]

IBM is sounding the trumpets this week about SOA. Big Blue is offering SOA Webcasts and movies, planning giveaways of SOA books, meeting with press and analysts, sending out press releases, overwhelming less-than-modern CPUs and disks (or at least my CPU and disk drive...and corporate server e-mail quota) with hefty presentation files, and otherwise filling many hours of IBMers' schedules with various internal communications, teleconferences, and Webcasts educating all of us about the value of SOA. In short: SOA is a big deal around here. Broadly speaking, IBM is emphasizing some key talking points, such as that IBM and its partners are SOA leaders, and that SOA is delivering business value (operational results, flexibility, innovation), and that SOA continues to enjoy enhancements. For developers, perhaps one of the most notable SOA developments is the new WebSphere Service Registry and Repository (WSRR) software, which helps to manage web services and shared business processes. I encourage you to check out the related article (and others in this intro-to-WSRR series) from developerWorks, as well as the broader collection of SOA materials highlighted in our developerWorks "top story" this week (which also highlights the related SOA Resource Center ). Also of note, from dW bloggers: Bobby Woolf (in his blog ) points to an entry in his "WebSphere SOA and J2EE in Practice" Wiki about the WSRR Todd Watson discusses Everything You've Ever Wanted to Know About SOA...But Were... [More]

At the alphaWorks 10-year anniversary celebration today, IBM unveiled aW's next big thing: alphaWorks Services.
Details are now available on the aW site. alphaWorks Services extends alphaWorks beyond a place to download emerging technologies. Now you can also leverage the software-as-a-service delivery model at alphaWorks. Now developers, businesses and universities can easily
access emerging technologies over the Internet directly from IBM R&D labs, and provide real-time feedback to help shape these technologies -- and the future. We at IBM see alphaWorks Services as benefiting both the community and IBM. For IBM, alphaWorks services serves as a tool that will help IBM respond quickly to changing business needs and requirements, and in turn, deliver higher quality software to the marketplace. For early adopters and innovators, alphaWorks Services will let organizations adopting these cutting-edge technologies more quickly, and make it easier to collaboratively innovate. As part of today's announcement, aW offers its first technologies to be offered as a service : Ad hoc Development and Integration tool for End Users (ADIEU) is a simplified online tool for rapid collaborative development of Web apps and Web services. It lets you develop applications in an environment designed for non-programmers. (Example: create a Web service in a matter of minutes that will deliver stock quote information as an RSS or Atom feed.)
Web Relational Blocks (WebRB) is a visual... [More]

At the big alphaWorks 10th Anniversary party today, quite a bit is happening. Including a big announcement and demos from people like Marc Goubert, manager of alphaWorks, and Rod Smith, vice president of emerging internet technology and IBM Fellow. Details will be made available here soon after the announcement happens. Stay tuned. Meantime, check out the related podcast interviews , including:
This week on developerWorks (20 Sep 2006 mp3 audio file) Marc Goubert, manager of alphaWorks, joins to reflect on alphaWorks' success and the future, all in advance of the 10th anniversary celebration.
developerWorks Interviews: alphaWorks success stories Conversations with IBMers whose technologies have taken off with the help of alphaWorks
developerWorks Interviews: IBM executives on alphaWorks at 10 years Three critical players in alphaWorks' history reflect on IBM's highly regarded early-adopter program See also my earlier entry about the alphaWorks birthday -- and developerWorks birthday.

We're gearing up for a big milestone here: The 10th anniversary of alphaWorks. You're invited to join the alphaWorks celebration and next-generation launch September 25 in San Francisco. Meantime we've gathered a few key leaders who've helped establish and grow alphaWorks for a revealing discussion. Check out this new "alphaWorks at 10 years" podcast, in which developerWorks interviews Irving Wladawsky-Berger, Rod Smith, and Gina Poole. There's another anniversary this month, too: The 7th anniversary of the formal launch of developerWorks. (The initial "beta" version of developerWorks appeared in the summer of 1999; the formal launch was in late September.) Throughout its seven-year history, developerWorks' fundamental mission has remained constant: To serve the wants and needs of developers and technical professionals. Another constant has been the difference between developerWorks and other vendor-sponsored developer sites: Our focus extends beyond our own company's products and services to include content and resources dedicated to open standards and product- and platform-independent content. (For more historical context, see this JavaWorld article and the related IBM press release .) aW and dW continue to grow and evolve with our communities of developers and technical pros and early adopters. Consider for example developerWorks' growing open source zone that includes dedicated sections for Eclipse, PHP, and Apache Derby and Geronimo. Our extensive collection... [More]

Earlier this week I felt a pain in my chest ... something I'd never really experienced before, at least not without a known cause. I didn't think it was anything serious; the pain was not severe. But since I was unfamiliar with this sort of pain and I did not know the cause, I started exploring the symptom online. Virtually everything I could find suggested any chest pain could be a sign of a heart attack or heart issue, and encouraged getting medical care immediately. I was reluctant, but considering that a heart attack killed my grandfather before I met him, as well as my wife's strong encouragement, I agreed to go to the nearby hospital emergency room. Chest pain apparently is the first-class ticket in ER; it really seems to draw prompt attention. I've been to emergency rooms before for such things as a broken bone, and I recall spending hours in the waiting room before getting examined and treated. But this week, when I went in and mentioned chest pain, they immediately escorted me into an exam room to check my vitals, then moved me to another room to hook me up to various machines (EKG, oxygen, etc.). For a few minutes I had four people surrounding me, attaching tubes, inserting needles, drawing blood, and checking equipment... And while I was getting all of that attention, I started to think this might be really serious. I suppose that explains why my blood pressure went up quite a bit since it was first measured in room number one. Next they took X-rays and... [More]

This week IBM is jamming. As in holding a live jam session, online, focused on innovation. As IBM GM Buell Duncan notes in his blog : today ibm launched its innovation jam. literally tens of thousands of ibmers from around the world are coming together to share ideas and opinions on ways to drive innovation in market opportunities ... what makes this jam even more interesting is that more than a thousand customers and partners are participating, as well as friends and family! like earlier jams, this will generate thousands of new ideas to build upon addressing some of the key challenges of our time. jamming, collaborating, blogging - the better we are at exchanging ideas and standing on each other's shoulders, the more successful all of us will be. it's all about communicating... more often and more clearly. communicate, communicate, communicate ---- like partnering 1+1 usually equals more than three! In the same spirit of helping one another be more successful, I encourage all developerWorks visitors to exchange ideas with us: Please share your thoughts with the developerWorks team. Simply comment in this blog with your ideas, feedback, requests ... any input that may help us "stand on each other's shoulders." --Michael P.S. For those who've asked where I've been lately, I'm just back from some international travel and my wedding and honeymoon. So look for more activity in this space now that (sigh) the honeymoon is over...

Great news: if you missed Tuesday's keynote presentation, don't fret. You can catch a replay at your leisure via developerWorks. Which means you don't have to rely on any blogger summary. Yesterday I joined dW podcasts editor Scott Laningham for several interviews with IBM execs and thought leaders. Some good conversations. We're posting those podcasts interviews on developerWorks as well on dW, as quickly as we can get them up. Definitely worth a listen. This morning I enjoyed the guest speaker, Benjamin Zander . He was quite popular, as evidenced by the sellout of some 500 copies of a book he co-authored with his wife, The Art of Possibility . Good stuff. (See Scott Laningham's blog for a bit more description .) Later on the show floor I visited with some folks dropping by the dW pedastals. One remarked that he really values our discussion forums, and "couldn't do his job without 'em." If you haven't taken advantage of the dW discussion forums , you may want to. Tonight we're off to Universal CityWalk and Islands of Adventure... Gotta go!

At yesterday's keynote, Roger Oberg and Danny Sabbah described how software can work (or play) together in concert. Roger discussed how pieces of software can interoperate across technologies, global boundaries, silos, and even generations. He also noted that significant freedoms can be gained by governing development, leaving more room to innovate. Danny mentioned three trends - community, modularity, and empowerment. He also discussed how "passive governance… [the] integration of automation into what we do every day" fuels innovation. He said governance empowers teams, provides greater efficiencies through reuse, allows for clearly defined goals and greater line of sight, and increases efficiencies of globally distributed environments. Danny led a discussion with panelists (including Joe Bugajski, VP Global Standards, VISA; Jan Roberts, Senior Director, CETS, Network Software & Systems Technology Group, Cisco Systems; and Jay Cappy, Managing Director, BearingPoint) who described their challenges and reinforced the importance of community, modularity, empowerment, and open standards. At a press conference after the keynote, Danny Sabbah emphasized IBM's support of open source, saying open source software "is something we are incorporating into our business strategy. And we're not gonna fight it like others. We're not going try to keep proprietary standards that fight against open source. ... I don't believe that it's bad for the industry at all -- unlike a few of our... [More]

Sunday at the Rational conference here in Orlando, I co-presented a session about IBM developerWorks with Michelle Ulrich. Decent turnout for a Sunday morning I'd say, people asked a few good questions. Seems one area of interest is the wikis. One attendee asked if we'd be offering more of these on developerWorks, and in fact we plan to do so; stay tuned. If you have not yet done so, check out the existing dW wikis , including the the Emerging Technologies Toolkit (ETTK) Community wiki . Our new AIX and Unix zone also includes an AIX wiki . We also had a couple of questions about searching for dW content, including one query about the dW search plug-in you can add to your Firefox browser . Our welcome reception poolside this evening had a bit of added water, courtesy rain clouds, which prompted folks to get closer as they found cover until the rain subsided. I'd imagine some people got better acquainted with one another -- and after all, isn't a big part of the value of these events the chance to socialize, network, meet new faces, etc? We got a bit of help from Mother Nature... This year I'm happy to see the RSDC conference include a robust track dedicated to open sourch and standards. The " Open Computing: Open Source to Open Standards " track includes about 15 sessions on topics such as Eclipse, PHP, Apache, Ajax, Grid, Ruby, and XML. I'll be sure to attend some of those. Looking forward to the big keynote (yes, this is indoors, so no need for umbrellas) at 8 a.m.... [More]

Amidst all the hoopla at JavaOne (which included a keynote presentation by Erich Gamma and John Wiegand telling the inside story of Eclipse, including how its development has evolved over the past five years, from both a technical and a process perspective; check out the Eclipse keynote replay ( RealPlayer required)), this notable item related to open, cross-platform interoperability may have slipped under many a radar: " Open Ajax Alliance formally opens for business " (Computer Business Review) Here's an excerpt: As for the focus on programming models, the goal is to develop compatibility between commercial and open source Ajax tools that have until now evolved largely in a vacuum. "If you use multiple Ajax toolkits, today they don't share the [web] page very well," said [David Boloker, CTO for IBM's Emerging Internet Technology Software Group], noting that each set of tools has different sets of event handlers and widgets. "The lack of interoperability would cause the demise of Ajax," said John Crupi, CTO of fellow member JackBe. In short, the members of this initiative seek to "promote Ajax's promise of universal compatibility with any computer device, application, desktop or operating system, and easy incorporation into new and existing software programs." (See the initial (Feb. 2006) Open Ajax Initiative press release .) Open Ajax "is a consolidated development effort," said Rod Smith, IBM Vice President of Emerging Technologies. "We'll do better collectively working... [More]

IBM today announced it has purchased BuildForge, a leading provider of build and release management software. Rational VP Roger Oberg concisely describes the deal in an InfoWorld /IDG News Service article: BuildForge is "a very natural complement" to what IBM customers are already using Rational for, according to Roger Oberg, vice president for Rational marketing and strategy at IBM. He pointed out that IBM didn't previously have its own build-management software, and that it was already a strong user of BuildForge's products internally for building software suites. IBM also intends to maintain BuildForge's "agnostic" approach, continuing support for non-IBM development tools as well as for Rational, Oberg added.
As noted in the related FAQ : Organizations are increasingly under pressure to deliver enterprise products and services faster. Development organizations are hard pressed to manage complex applications, coordinate globally distributed development and production teams while maintaining high software quality. Additionally, they are faced with the need to meet compliance mandates — either from external or internal pressures — that require complete traceability and audit trails that demand a new flexible development infrastructure. BuildForge products help clients accelerate software delivery, as well as meet audit and compliance mandates across distributed, cross-platform environments. ... BuildForge products provide complete build and release process management. They... [More]

If you haven't yet checked out developerWorks podcasts , perhaps our new " developerWorks Interviews " series will make you reconsider. Scott Laningham and I kick off the dW interviews series by talking with Grady Booch , who discusses, among other things, innovation and evolution in IT and the challenges and opportunities facing developers today, such as balancing the flood of new technology without rejecting the fundamentals. I think you'll find it worth a listen. (And for those who prefer the written word, we offer transcripts as well as the audio .)

This week the RSS Advisory Board voted to expand its membership to 15 members. As stated in an rssboard.org news item : The board is an independent organization formed in 2003 that publishes the Really Simple Syndication specification , helps developers create RSS applications and works to broaden public understanding of the format. ... If you are involved in RSS as a publisher, programmer, educator or executive and you'd be interested in joining, please contact board chairman Rogers Cadenhead . A friendly shout out to Chairman Cadenhead, with whom I once played some D&D-like role-playing games when we were both seniors at Berkner High School. Guess we were both doomed to geekish careers... Note that meanwhile, several dW and IBM techies have blogged about the benefits of Atom , an alternative to RSS. One detail of this announcement did prompt a raised eyebrow: "This proposal revises the charter to expand the board and permit deliberations on new members to take place privately, rather than on the mailing list RSS-Board " (emphasis added). Hmmm. Do closed deliberations regarding new board members make the standard any less open? Food for thought.

developerWorks just launched a brand new zone dedicated to AIX and UNIX . This new zone focuses on system administration, performance, and problem solving for UNIX and AIX, and will also address migration and porting issues. A recent featured article addresses performance tuning of UNIX systems. This week's feature article helps you "make UNIX work with Windows XP and Mac OS X," and another new article shows you how UNIX and Linux can work together, sharing core databases and file systems. And there's much more already available -- and more to come. Check out the new AIX and UNIX zone . Oh, and please do send any feedback -- via either comments here or the "rate this page" forms within the zone.

We just launched a new weekly podcast that discusses the latest content on developerWorks. " This Week on developerWorks " is co-hosted by yours truly and Podcast Editor Scott Laningham, and will include dW editors, authors, and other guests. We welcome your feedback and suggestions. We're also looking into adding a "question of the week." So if you have any questions for us to consider, please post 'em here as comments.

If you haven't yet heard about the efforts to bring an open-source approach to patents that will improve their quality, I encourage you to read Irving Wladawsky-Berger's related blog entry, " Improving Patent Quality as a Community ," which aptly describes this initiative, which "bring the spirit of collaborative innovation to the really difficult challenge of improving the quality of patents." The three elements of the patent quality initiative: Open Patent Review will establish an open, collaborative community review in the patenting process. The project will use regularly scheduled USPTO email alerts with links to newly-published patent applications as a way to invite the public review and feedback on prior art. Open Source Software as Prior Art -- the Open Source Development Lab, along with IBM, Novell, Red Hat and SourceForge, are developing an electronic system to store open source software code in a searchable format. The system will enable patent examiners and the public to review the code and identify prior art. The Patent Quality Index evaluates if a patent meets the standards of patentability determined by patent law. The Index, which will rank patent applications based on their clarity and substance, also will serve as a best practice tool for patent applications, holders and examiners. See also Bob Sutor's related blog entry (hosted on developerWorks), which boasts a rich collection of links to related articles and blogs. You may also want to read about the... [More]

In case you haven't already heard, the much-anticipated version 1.0 of Apache Geronimo is now available for download . Dave Klavon lists "some of the key functions delivered in this maiden release" (as well as links to more info) in the dW blog dedicated to Geronimo. Want to learn more? developerWorks offers a section dedicated to Geronimo project resources , and has published quite a bit of Geronimo-related material . Of particular interest for newbies is our " Get started with Geronimo " article, which provides a good overview and will get you "up and running with Geronimo in five minutes flat." Note also that IBM's own WebSphere Application Server Community Edition is a lightweight J2EE application server built on Apache Geronimo.

Today's news on the open, cross-platform standards front: IBM is one of a dozen members of a newly formed group of universities and IT companies that has "adopted first-of-a-kind guiding principles to accelerate collaborative research for open source software." The goal: "Accelerate innovation and contribute to open software research across a breadth of initiatives, thus enabling the development of related industry standards and greater interoperability, while managing intellectual property in a more balanced manner." "Open source software and open standards jointly developed by universities, government and industry can create a powerful platform for collaborative innovation," said Dr. John E. Kelly III, senior vice president of Technology & Intellectual Property for IBM. "These principles are based on a balanced approach to IP management and should stimulate additional joint industry and university research projects." For more details, see: " Guidelines Set on Software Property Rights " (The New York Times) ; this NYT article also is available from CNet The formal press release ("Twelve Leaders Adopt Principles to Accelerate Innovation")